Creatures of Habit (6 page)

When she met Alan, he talked a lot about the real world and about how so many kids her age had no idea what they were in for when they were actually expected to work and participate in adult venues. “Except someone like you, of course,” he added. He made her feel smart and mature. He constantly commented on her appearance, saying how she was someone he wouldn't dream of raising a scalpel to; there was nothing to perfect. She didn't believe that, but still it was enough to make her want to keep her brows plucked and her legs waxed, to primp and preen as she had watched her suitemate do. She never mentioned Randy to Alan, except to
say that she had known him her whole life and that the relationship had ended because he had needed some time to find himself.

“Oh please,” Alan said, “I haven't said that since I was fifteen.” At the time she was still so hurt and angry at Randy that she relished hearing someone else attack him. Randy could not afford one of Alan's shoes, not to mention the pearl and diamond earrings he gave her. Randy's idea of a good present had been water skis and a thong bikini she had never had the nerve to wear. She was impressed by Alan's good looks and his Italian suits (though she never would have known their nationality if not told), the gray Volvo he insisted she drive because it was so much safer than her Dodge Dart, the places he took her for dinner (her suitemates begged her to order big and then get doggie bags).

Still, she had those moments when she felt washed in homesickness and desperate to reclaim what had always been hers. She wished herself back to her hometown, where she and Randy used to get food from Taco Bell and then sit out in the middle of Hollydale Cemetery, where they leaned against the side of the only mausoleum in the place. They had been going there since the fifth grade when they chalked their initials in the cool marble slab and vowed that every word spoken in this place was top secret. It was their
place, something they had never told another living soul about. But by graduation she had put Randy out of her mind and instead was trying to decide what to do with her life. Teach high school French as her diploma entitled her to do? Go to graduate school?

She had gotten used to riding along beside Alan. She was used to the way the soft leather of the seats felt against the backs of her legs, the way the car smelled clean and like the cologne Alan wore (Aramis) and not like stale beer and cigarettes and wet dog. He talked at great length about his work and about his clients (swearing her to secrecy) and about his ex-wife, who was trying to bleed him dry. It made her feel more mature than she had ever imagined being. She felt secure in the knowledge from one day to the next that someone was planning where she would eat and what she would do, and sometimes even what she would wear. She had read that many women seek this, a comfort zone that enables them to exist without physical hardships or worries. Then they can focus on the part of themselves that is creative and independent; they can raise children in a comfortable nest.

She was living at her parents' after graduating so she was still privy to all the hometown news: Randy had brought a girl to meet his family. They went with his mother to church on Sunday even though Randy hadn't been to church in
years. Lisa knew from the descriptions that it was the same Chi O girl and she confirmed it herself when she rode by his parents' house late that Sunday night when she couldn't sleep and saw the little red car parked there. She stopped at the corner and waited, half hoping that Randy would see her sitting there.

Later that same week, she heard that Randy was applying to veterinary school and was going to take a year off in the interim. Work a little, move in with the girlfriend, who would be starting graduate work in the fall. She saw him at the A & P soon after hearing this and crept up behind him, placed her hands over his eyes, but before he could even guess, the girlfriend was standing beside him, her arm looped through his. “You must be Lisa,” she said without really cracking a smile. “Randy has told me all about you, all about your little secret places like the one we went to today —creepy—and your secret languages from grade school. Cute.” If his eyes showed any apology for his betrayal she didn't see it, and after a polite exchange—he asked her if she was still involved with the “plastic doc”—she dashed out of the store, abandoning her cart behind the greeting-card stand.

So of course she said yes when Alan asked her to move in with him. Who wouldn't? After all, here was this successful, nice-looking person ready to take care of her for life. And
marriage made the most sense of all. What she had with Randy was a kid thing; intellectually she knew that this was the choice that made the most sense for her. So she read
Bride
magazine cover to cover, and the thought of herself in one of those dresses, the wonderful place settings to choose from, the whole prospect of buying her very own house with window treatments and furniture thrilled her beyond belief and took up a good chunk of her time. She would have to think about school or a job later,
after
the wedding. She might even decide not to get a job at all, ever, a luxury she had never dreamed of having.

Randy sent her a wedding gift—a doormat that said “Wipe Your Paws” and a cookbook with all of Elvis Presley's favorite meals called
Fit for a King.
She had not shown Alan these, fearing what he might say, though for several late nights, she scoured the pages of the cookbook for a hidden message—anything, a hair from his head, a turned down page that might lead her to read every word for the message. She told herself that if there was not a sign, she should let go and move on.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” her mother had asked, and though she had a chilling moment when she wanted to voice her uncertainty, she had a sudden image of Randy bumping along the fields in his truck with the Chi O,
showing her all of the places and telling her all of the things they had sworn to keep secret, and it made her sink her heels deeper. It made her turn her attention to some more expensive choices: she went from Gorham to Wedgwood. Everyone got cold feet. She studied all the travel ads in the back of the magazines. Alan had said that they could go anywhere on their honeymoon—anywhere she wanted to go.

“Niagara Falls or the Poconos.” She had stated her choices firmly so that he wouldn't talk her into some place like Italy or Hawaii, places she might want to visit as an older person. And of course going to a place known for honeymoons was corny but that was part of the fun of it all. She imagined they would take photos of the two of them lounging in a heart-shaped tub. It would be the sort of thing you could pull out and laugh about for the rest of your life. Alan said he had taken Susan Hunter on a cruise, and even though he could not afford it at the time, the two of them had always been so happy that they splurged and did it up big.

“Well, this is what I want,” she said and showed him all the pictures in the magazines. “There is a swimming pool right in your room.”

“Oh God,” he sighed his worldly sigh and laughed. “If this is what you want then, okay.”

There was condescension in his voice; she heard it loud and clear, but she would prove him wrong. Now, as she stood looking around the hotel entryway, she anticipated his saying
I told you so
. It looked nothing like the pictures. It looked as much like the Bates Motel as it did the pictures. She had read recently that Janet Leigh never showered after making
Psycho.
Who could blame her? Janet was in
Psycho
and Tony Curtis played the Boston Strangler. No wonder Jamie Lee Curtis wound up making those Halloween movies. She said all of this to Alan, but he claimed to know nothing about cult movies and horror shows. He only knew
films
and he was likely to
not
like what other people liked. He called it discriminating. There was a time less than a year ago when she would have called it boring. Randy would have said
So who died and made you the goddamn authority?

Heart-shaped tubs and round beds. Fireplaces. Jacuzzis. It was clear that at one time this place had been
the
place to go—like maybe in the sixties. The nightclub entry was lined with photos of stars who had visited in the past: Milton Berle, Soupy Sales, and Charo, one of the most recent, the giggling Spanish woman who got famous by screaming “kichie kichie” while beating on a guitar and wearing next to nothing.

While they waited, Alan commented that Lisa looked sad
and then explained that what she was feeling was a kind of postpartum after all the excitement of the wedding. He said that Susan Hunter had experienced something very similar after their wedding and after the births of both children. “It's one of those female things,” he said. Randy would have had something sarcastic to say back to that, something smart and cynical. She realized then that part of her honeymoon fantasy had always been that Randy would
be
there. Other than family vacations, she had never traveled anywhere
without
him. He loved nothing better than a road trip.

Once during her sophomore year in college, they had headed out with no destination in mind. At every fork, he'd ask her to choose
left
or
right
. They finally wound up near the beach on old Highway 301 in what looked like a ghost town of little pastel cinder-block buildings. Other than the Days Inn where they got a room, there was a rundown shopping center with a grocery store and Laundromat. When they asked the person at the motel desk what there was to do, she pointed them in the direction of what she called the arcade. It was an old gas station that now housed several pinball machines and a pool table. The main attraction was the dancing chicken. Deposit a quarter outside its glass cage and kernels of corn were made available behind a chute that would open if the chicken danced over the red button on
the floor. Sometimes the chicken kept dancing even when the chute was empty. It reminded Lisa of the story of the red shoes and that poor girl who couldn't stop dancing; her choices were to dance herself to death or to cut off her feet. They had so much fun that they came back the next semester with several friends in tow. Nothing had changed. Not even the sheets on the motel beds, they joked. But that was before they went to the arcade to find that the dancing chicken had been replaced by a big rat snake who occasionally ate a live mouse but otherwise did nothing. There was a sign saying
DON'T TAP THE GLASS
so of course everyone did. They never saw anyone who actually worked at the arcade, so there was no way to find out what happened to the chicken. Lisa was sure that it had danced itself to death. Randy suggested that it had eaten itself to death, that maybe a tour bus of lost but well-meaning travelers pumped quarter after quarter into the slot. Or maybe somebody got hungry one night and wrung its neck, fried it up. Either way, it was gone.

F
INALLY THEY WERE
all checked in just in time for a flock of kids to rush past and into a room off of the lobby as big as a skating rink and just as loud. There was a clown entertaining children. He had a cotton-candy machine. There
was a popcorn machine. There were canisters of helium for balloons that he twisted and shaped into animals that children wore on their heads. There was a magician and someone who could cornrow the girls' hair and apply henna tattoos. It was a bar mitzvah. Oy. Funny what manhood looks like from a distance.

This was so
not
what she had expected but she clung to the notion of the little pool in the room and how she was going to stretch out on that round bed fully clothed and fall into a deep deep sleep. She didn't care if she slept through the honeymoon night and on into the next day. All she wanted now was sleep and rest. It was the postwedding jitters, that was all, and come morning, she would be okay again. She would see, by the light of day, that she had made the right decision, that this was the beginning of a wonderful life together.

But they had only an hour left to be served in the dining room, so Alan checked their bags and off they went down mazes of hallways, following signs for the restaurant. Outside the door to the restaurant, where they had to wait in line yet again, there was someone drawing caricatures, someone selling costume jewelry, and a psychic. Her little sign said
ask rose
and there were other little signs featuring comments from satisfied customers. Things like
ROSE SAVED MY LIFE
,
POCONOS ROSE KNOWS, I WILL NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN
. Apparently Rose did palms, tarot, or she would simply talk to you about what lay ahead.

Lisa was watching several women huddled together waiting their turn. Rose looked up and directly at her. The gaze was so strong and intentional, Lisa looked around to see if there might be someone else Rose was staring at. There was no one else. Alan had struck up a conversation with the couple in front of them, a couple closer to his age who were also disappointed in the accommodations. Lisa attempted a smile to acknowledge the dark gaze but Rose just lifted her chin as if to say
I know your secret.

Lisa was leaning toward the
ASK ROSE
table, but then Alan was pulling her into the dining room and over to a far, darkened corner he had tipped the maître d' to get. “What is it?” he asked, but she didn't dare tell him what she was thinking. That she felt her mind had been read. That perhaps this woman knew more than she did, or maybe knew what Lisa wasn't willing to admit to herself. She just said that she was tired. And when they were finally served and finished and about to head up to the bridal suite, all of the vendors in the hallway were gone, leaving little cardboard placards with their hours and specialties behind. She stood staring at the sign for Poconos Rose, hoping for some clue,
some reason to believe she was a total phony and that the look she gave Lisa meant absolutely nothing.

Their room was drab with stained wall-to-wall carpeting, old floral spread and drapes (red and yellow). It was something not so different from what you'd see in a Days Inn. Back then, with Randy, it was funny. Back then she didn't feel embarrassed the way she did now as she and Alan stood in the doorway. He wanted to lift her over the threshold but she reminded him of his bad back. Anyway, she was very busy taking in the disappointing sights. There was a cheap painting of a mountain scene. There was a bidet but this was not a bidet of elegance; rather, it was more like a kind of sexhygiene thing—quick spritz and you're ready for more. She could die. She sat on the bed and started crying and when she did Alan was right there behind her, telling her how he understood. He didn't even say
I told you so.